This was me late Saturday night after our IX show. Yes, I had been reeeally sick Thursday into Friday morning, but perked up enough by Saturday to play the show. #FreeFall is a relatively big show for me, an outdoor venue that usually draws about a thousand people. We were co-headlining with @thesallyroseband and the vibe at IX was really great: warm weather, a mellow but very into it crowd. I sang through soundcheck, I sang a stripped down opening set, I sang 2 songs with Sally in her set, and then RIGHT before our full band set to close out the night, I started to lose my voice. I sounded like I’d spent my whole life smoking cigarettes in a whiskey bar. I felt like I had no vocal control, I didn’t know how I could possibly sing my songs! But there was no time to think about it cuz I was already onstage. Nathan Moore of @wtjuradio gave us a sweet introduction that I wish I could remember! Then I croaked into the mic “So.. this isn’t what my voice usually sounds like! But I’m gonna try to sing anyway. It’ll either go horribly wrong or I’ll finally achieve my dream of sounding like a female Tom Waits.”...The first song was pretty pathetic but then I applied some things my voice teacher @christinafleming6 taught me: relaxing my facial muscles, engaging my core, telling my throat that it doesn’t need to do the work. A shot of rum from @vitaespirits helped too! Having to use a completely different voice really kept me in the moment. Playing live can sometimes be hard for me. If I let my mind wander to what people might be thinking about me, I can get really tense and anxious. But I didn’t feel any of that on Saturday night. I could really feel the crowd’s support all night! About 40 minutes in, it started lightly raining. I saw about a third of the crowd leaving and after the song I said “maybe that should be our last song? Cuz of the rain?” But I heard howls of “No!”, “keep playing!”, “more!” so we played for like 20 more minutes. I made it through our whole set 😊 Sunday morning, my voice was totally gone. It hasn’t come back yet but I don’t mind. It was totally worth it 😄